Bashiok on Skill Caps and WoW-Comparisons

Bashiok made a couple of posts today, quickly and efficiently countering some criticism of the skill caps, before using more words to wearily reply to yet another “too much like WoW” post.

First up, Is five points too low a cap for skills? Yes, says Bashiok, which is why that’s not going to be the cap for skills that matter.

Skill caps start at 5 and go up from there. We’ll have a way for them to be increased and right now we like the idea of the player being able to choose which one/s they want to increase. So if that’s the case it’ll probably be an item you can use to “unlock” a skill cap to a higher number, and maybe a few of these skill cap unlocking items will be provided through playing the game (major quest/act completion rewards) and then also maybe as very rare item drops.

Elsewhere, a fan makes a very long (and historically clueless) post about Diablo 3’s development, art direction, and apparent WoW similarities. Bashiok honors him with a wordy reply, but you can tell he’s danced this dance too many times, and his heart’s not in it.

Well I think it’s kind of easy to look at changes and advancements in the RPG genre as a whole and narrow them down to any number of sources to fit each use.

To make a car analogy (my favorite!) it would be like having issues with the newest version of the mustang because its body styling takes into account things like passenger safety and aerodynamics, and being upset by this because these are features also found in the ford focus. A clearly inferior car in the eyes of the mustang enthusiast. These types of ideas could never have been thought of or would ever be included in the Mustang, of course, had not both cars been manufactured by Ford.

It’s just all a bit silly. What I do think is interesting is the differentiation between the hardcore Diablo II players (most of y’all) and the majority of the rest of the game buying public. From our showing at BlizzCon and PAX a lot of the articles and off-site (non fansite) discussions are saying that Diablo III may not be doing enough to change itself from Diablo II. If those people read some of the posts here you’d think we were putting a Diablo sticker on a WoW box and calling it a day. So it’s just an interesting difference between the audiences and how level of dedication changes perceptions and expectation.

And I don’t mean to lump everyone together, I’d say aside from the trolls the majority of posters here are actually level headed and logical. At least able to take multiple things into consideration. Reasonable thought process and understanding that the game is a work in progress, and not someone that sees a character with a slight hunch and makes a leap of logic that we must be using model/animation assets from a different game.

That’s still my favorite. Cause of it bein’ so stupid ‘n all.

But anyway I guess what I’m getting at is… I’d really like to read something new and original. These posts are getting tired.